Urbana, Triad reach deals with school unions for raises

By Matt Sanctis

July 4, 2016

The Urbana City and Triad Local school districts both recently reached agreements with their school unions.

Urbana school board members recently approved a memorandum of understanding with the Urbana Association of Classroom Teachers that will provide for a 1.5 percent raise, Superintendent Charles Thiel said.

The administration has also reached a tentative agreement with the union representing the district’s classified staff, Thiel said, and will present that agreement at a board meeting in July.

The most recent teachers union contract included language that allowed for salary negotiations in the final year of the current three-year deal, Thiel said. In all, the deal will cost the district about $430,000, including wages and benefits, Thiel said.

The agreement also allows teachers to recover one step increase for those who have had three step freeze increases in the past few years, he said.

The current deal with the teachers union runs through May next year, and the district will likely begin negotiations for a new contract with the union next spring. The negotiations with the teachers union went smoothly, he said.

“We met three times in order to get it settled so it was a fairly quick process as far as the time we spent looking at it,” he said of the latest agreement.

Board members with the Triad Local School District also recently approved a three-year deal with its Ohio Association of Public School Employees Local 693, Superintendent Chris Piper said.

Workers there will receive a 1.5-percent raise for each of the three years in the deal, which will cost the district about $66,500 each year. That agreement is similar to the contract the district recently approved with its teachers union, Piper said.

“We did it pretty quickly and it was a good process,” Piper said of the labor negotiations.